This website features witness testimony from lawsuits heard in the 1480s and 1490s before the London Consistory, the highest-level church court in the diocese of London. People from the London diocese, which included the city and the counties of Middlesex, Essex, and parts of Hertfordshire, brought their disputes about a range of issues central to their lives to this court. About half the cases involved marriage conflicts, the other half centring around defamation, debt, the probate of wills, and other issues. The testimony of their witnesses reveals much about marriage, gender, sexuality, law, urban life, labour, credit, material culture, concepts of honour and reputation, literacy, the workings of the ecclesiastical court system, and religious beliefs and practice.
The original records are in Latin; these translations to modern English (click here for access to the Latin transcription) are by Dr. Shannon McSheffrey, Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal. This project has been supported over many years by the Ames Foundation at the Harvard Law School.
Consistory Court Cases
Thomas Lak c. Ann Munden
This case has a dramatic allegation. It starts with an ordinary path to marriage: Ann Munden made a contract of marriage with Thomas Lak in early January 1482 and…
Agnes Whitingdon c. John Ely
In January 1487, Agnes Whitingdon sued John Ely to enforce a marriage contract they allegedly made in September 1486. Ely claimed he had not contracted marriage with her, although…
Agnes Waltham c. Richard Heth
Agnes Waltham sued Richard Heth in 1487 to enforce a marriage contract she said they had made. Testimony reveals some interesting evidence about neighbourhood surveillance of relationships: one of…
John Croke c. Agnes Hill
The surviving testimony for this suit is incomplete, but reveals some interesting things about a marriage between two offspring of London’s civic elite. In February 1487, John Croke sued…
John Halyday c Margaret Partrich
In 1487, John Halyday sued Margaret Partrich to enforce a marriage contract they allegedly made in June 1486; all that survives is the defendant’s examination. Partrich acknowledged in her…
John Palmer c. Christopher Manser
In February 1487, John Palmer sued Christopher Manser over unpaid debts. The witnesses both testify that sometime during the first three weeks of Lent (February or early March) 1486…
Joan Austy c. William Codding
This case involves a complicated love quadrangle and allegations of poisoning in Whitechapel on the east end of London. We have in the Consistory records only the February 1487…
Richard Tymond c. Margery Sheppard
Around mid-year in 1487, Richard Tymond sued Margery Sheppard to enforce a marriage contract they allegedly made in May 1486. When examined, Sheppard said that Tymond had urged her…
Alice Norman c. William Clerk
This is a case about the last will and testament of a woman, Maude Mig, who died of leprosy around 1487. She and her husband had been judicially separated…
John Tailour c. Agnes Fry
In late June 1487, John Tailour sued the widow Agnes Fry to enforce a marriage contract he alleged they had made the previous April. Fry herself testified that when…
John Brocher c. Joan Cardif alias Peryn
In July 1487, John Brocher sued a young Essex widow, Joan Cardif alias Peryn, to enforce a marriage contract he claimed they had made the previous April. The witnesses…
John Pollyn and William Thaccher c Agnes Parker
This is a three-cornered suit: two men, John Pollyn and William Thaccher, sued Agnes Parker 1487, each claiming they had made a contract of marriage with her. Earlier testimony…
Richard Crocheman c. William Baldewyn
In July 1487, Richard Crocheman sued William Baldewyn for defamation: Baldewyn had repeatedly over the last six weeks called Crocheman a sheep thief. The witnesses, all from Barking in…
Office c. Sir Richard Wodehous and Agnes Wilson [?]
In July 1487 a widow, Agnes Wilson, of Staines, Middlesex, or somewhere nearby, was examined regarding allegations that she and the local vicar, Sir Richard Wodehous, were engaging in…
Beatrice Smyth c John Crote
In July 1487, Beatrice Smyth sued John Crote to enforce a marriage contract she claimed they had made around 1482 while Crote lay ill in a chamber in the…
Alice Rokewode c Peter Hanham
This case offers a rare instance of a man claiming he could only marry with his family’s consent. In November 1487, Alice Rokewood sued Peter Hanham to enforce a…
Thomas Byrch c. Elizabeth Barker
The examinations in this case do not much concern the marriage case in question, in which (we can infer) Thomas Byrch claimed that he had made a contract of…
Sir John Hode c. Master John Row
Here we see an altercation between priests over a breviary, a book containing the “divine office” for each day, which priests used to conduct church services. The Consistory paid…
John Call c. Elizabeth Hertford
In this defamation case, Elizabeth Hertford of Islington was accused of grievously insulting her neighbour John Call, calling him a thief, a cuckold, and various other names (accusations that…
Margaret Niter and Agnes Skern c. Piers Curtes
This is a juicy case that brought in some of the highest in the land to pressure a reluctant man to go through with a marriage. In January 1488,…
Alice Parker c. Richard Tenwinter
This case involves ambiguous promises and different interpretations of the meaning of sex. Alice Parker probably lived in the parish of St Nicholas Shambles by the butchers’ stalls towards…
William Halley c. Agnes Wellis
In this case, we see Agnes Wellis, a young woman living with her widowed mother and her new husband, courted by William Halley, a young man with a “pretty…
Alice Billingham c John (or Thomas) Wellis
In 1488, Alice Billingam sued John Wellis, claiming that they had contracted marriage on Valentine’s Day 1486. The witnesses for the case had interesting things to say about how…
William Hawkyns c. Margaret Heed
In 1488, Margaret Heed, daughter of a wealthy London merchant, agreed to marry William Hawkyns, another merchant and clearly her father’s choice. As the witnesses testify, Margaret Heed said…
Enquiry into an accidental death in building an anchorhold
In June 1488, a worker, John Ferres, was killed while doing demolition work on a house being renovated for the enclosure of an anchorite, a person who for spiritual…
John Hill and Emma Wright c. Elizabeth Leg alias Hill
Despite the rigid once-you’re-married-it’s-for-life nature of medieval Catholic marriage, in practice people practised some DIY when it came to marriage dissolution. The case had two alleged self-divorces. It is…
Ann Styward c. Richard Styward
When Ann, the widow of tallowchandler Richard Alpe and mother of four underage children, married another tallowchandler, Richard Styward, in early 1488, something resembling a nightmare resulted. By Styward’s…
Sir John Bolsar c. Thomas Pumpe
There’s some interesting evidence about local conflict-resolution through arbitration in this case. It involves a quarrel between a vicar and a layman about rent on a piece of land;…
Joan Essex c. Agnes Badcock
In late September 1488, Agnes Badcock allegedly accused a neighbour, Joan Essex, of committing adultery with Agnes’s husband John. The testimony offered by four men who lived nearby is…
John Mendis c. John Adam
In April 1488, several Middlesex men were talking together in the yard of a manor house following a wedding feast when one accused another of being a thief and…
Thomas Wulley c. Margaret Isot and John Heth
This is a fascinating case: witnesses give detailed stories about a local official, with a posse of neighbourhood elders, who burst in on a man and woman, Thomas Wulley…
Office c. Emma Hasill and Sir William Gavon
The examination of Emma Hasill, though brief, gives us a complex and sad story. A priest, Sir William Gavon, counselled Hasill to leave her husband; this was evidently more…
Prior and Convent of Blackmore c. Edward Clovell
This is a tithe dispute: Edward Clovell – evidently a prosperous farmer with several servants working for him – allegedly refused to render the tithe he owed from his…
Robert Philipson c Joan Corney
This is a rural Essex case of lovers pledging their love over a fruit tart eaten in a field – until a father’s hostility split them up. In 1489,…
Richard Cressy c. Alice Scrace
Cressy c. Scrace is an example of an uncontested lawsuit, where the point was not for the plaintiff to confirm or annul a marriage with the defendant but rather…
Thomas Hall and Thomas Salmon alias Miller c. Denise Pogger
In 1489, two men competed for the hand of widow Denise Pogger of Leyton, Essex, a woman who had her own house and perhaps more property. Both men presented…
John Jenyn c Alice Seton and John Grose
In a complicated three-cornered case that ran over more than a year, two men, John Jenyn and John Grose, each claimed to be married to Alice Seton. Jenyn’s claim…
Henry Kyrkeby c. Eleanor Roberts
Testimony in this case gives us fascinating insights into women’s employment conditions and the arrangement of marriage in rural Essex. Henry Kyrkeby’s witnesses claimed that Eleanor Roberts, a servant,…
Office c. Margaret Agmundesham
Margaret Agmundesham’s appearance before the Consistory Official may have been the result of an “office” case (where the court undertook an investigation into a matter under its purview), or…
Joan Ponder c. Margaret Samer
In early 1490, Margaret Samer of Buttsbury, Essex, allegedly said a number of scurrilous things about her neighbour Joan Ponder or more precisely about Joan’s mother: that Joan was…
Christian Hilles c. Robert Padley
The town of Stanford Rivers, Essex, saw a drama of thwarted love and premarital pregnancy in 1489 and 1490. Christian Hilles and Robert Padley, two servants who worked for…
William Calverley and William Case c. Joan Brown
The recently widowed Joan Brown lived in Stratford Langthorne, in a house large enough to have both a hall and a parlour. Widows with property were attractive marriage prospects,…
Alice Barbour c. William Barbour
A mind-boggling aspect of late medieval church courts was the employment of “juries of matrons” in suits for divorce by reason of impotence: the court could order a group…
Richard Chevircourt and Margery Phillips c. Robert Dow
The making of a marriage in the fifteenth-century diocese of London was a process rather a single event. One common path was the making of the contract of marriage,…
Thomas Walker c. Katherine Williamson alias Walker
According to the witnesses in this case, Katherine Williamson married two men in quick succession in 1482 and early 1483. This case is likely a suit to annul the…
William Newport c. Isabel Newport
According to the testimony in this case, Isabel Newport was about as bad a wife as it was possible to be in late fifteenth-century London: she was violent, disobedient,…
Robert Walsh and Mark Patenson c. Margaret Flemmyng
Margaret Flemmyng was evidently something of a marital catch, with youth, a substantial marriage portion, and probably also personal charm. Her parents evidently had one idea for her marriage…
Office c. Giles Eustas
Calculating where a person should pay tithes could be complicated: what happened, for instance, when the lands from which a person gained income straddled more than one parish? In…
Francis [Unknown] c. Elizabeth Clerk
This is a fragment: someone named Francis evidently sued Elizabeth Clerk, alleging that she had made a contract of marriage with him, and (as below) on examination, she denied…
Robert Woode c. Joan Patryk
In 1491 Joan Patryk accused Robert Woode, a shearman, of having “cut her purse,” literally cutting the cord from which a woman’s pouch or purse hung from her girdle…
Elizabeth Brown and Marion Lauson c. Laurence Gilis
This is one of the more complicated and interesting cases at the late fifteenth-century London consistory court. The basic case is straightforward: two women, Elizabeth Brown and Marion Lauson,…
Robert Warde c. Joan Qualley or Whalley
Within about five or six weeks of her husband William’s death in September 1491, London widow Joan Qualley or Whalley was receiving offers for her hand. She evidently considered…
Laurence Wyberd and John Austen c. Maude Gyll
In late 1491, two men – Laurence Wyberd of Essex and John Austen of Shoreditch or London – each claimed that they had made a contract of marriage with Maude…
John Bradfeld c. Joan John
Witnesses for this defamation case depict a vivid scene of Joan John and John Bradfeld arguing with one another by the Hythe[1], Colchester’s harbour some distance from the city…
Office c. John Barle
Some amusingly passive-aggressive behaviour on the part of a parishioner in the payment of his tithes in an unspecified Essex parish. John Barle came before the Consistory likely after…
Sir John Lyall c. Sir Thomas Kyrkeham
This is a case about the complex arrangements regarding the incomes for the support of parish clergy, known as benefices. Benefices were, on the one hand, pieces of property…
John Kendall c. Isabel or Elizabeth Wylly
An apprentice goldsmith named John Kendall sued Isabel (sometimes called Elizabeth[1]) Willy to enforce a contract of marriage he claimed that he had made with her. Kendall’s witnesses presented…
John Jarard c. Joan Nele alias Fysshe
In 1492, John Jarard sued Joan Nele, claiming her as his wife; Nele herself admitted that three years before he had given her two gifts, but denied that she…
[Unknown] c. Agnes Punchon
This is a frustrating kind of record: all we know is that Agnes Punchon appeared in the Consistory in June 1492, and denied whatever it was that an unnamed…
Thomas Philpott c. Margaret Frowyke
Another case of a man doggedly pursuing a woman, hoping to persuade her to marry him. The responses of Margaret Frowyke give us more details than other similar examinations:…
William Pepard c. Alice Mayte
This is an unusual defamation case: a mother, Alice Mayt, publicly accused a man, William Pepard, of having murdered her son, a child. The witnesses give some interesting details…
Ellen Mortemer c. William Chowe
Ellen Mortemer of Bermondsey sued William Chowe in 1492; all we have of the case is Chowe’s response to her submission, which we can infer involved a claim that…
Sir Thomas Wiseman c. Sir David Kingesbury
This case is a tithe dispute between two clerics, one a chaplain sent from an Augustinian priory in Suffolk to a chapel dedicated to St Laurence at Wormley, Hertfordshire,…
Marion Filders c. John Arnold
This may be an example of a stalled marriage process: according to the three witnesses, more than two years before, Marion Filders and John Arnold had contracted marriage in…
Maude Bywel c. Elisabeth or Isabel Jeld
A husband and wife from Edmonton, Middlesex, testified in 1494 about a quarrel amongst women on the street outside their house. A physical altercation was followed by insulting words,…
Agnes Eston c. John Crosby
In 1494, a young servant woman, Agnes Eston, sued John Crosby, a young man from London’s merchant elite. The two had been spending time alone in her chamber, with…
Margaret Shewyn alias Howsyn c. Adam Bagby
This is a case of disputed inheritance and whether legacies made by oral bequest were to be honoured even when not specified in the testament. Margaret Shewyn’s witnesses testified…
Agnes Moyne and Margaret Broke c Christopher Kechyn
Christopher Kechyn, a carpenter of mature years, was busy in 1496, contracting marriage with at least three young women. This brought him in early 1497 before both the Consistory…
Consistory 